The present application relates to dust-sized semiconductor chips (i.e., semiconductor nanochips) that are composed entirely of materials that are invisible to visible light and thus the human eye, as well as transparent electronic systems that include such dust-sized semiconductor chips.
In computing technology, there has been, and continues to be, a demand to decrease the size of the computing device, to increase connectivity, and/or to enhance interaction with the physical world. Recently, the popularity of small computing devices (such as, for example, cell phones, laptops, notebooks, watches, medical devices, etc.), rapid increase of Internet growth, and the diminishing size and costs of sensors such as, for example, transistors, have accelerated the aforementioned demands. The advent of small computing elements provides enriched opportunities to reshape interactions between people and computers and spur everlasting computing research.
Smart Dust is one type of technology that has emerged from such computing research. The term “Smart Dust” describes a wide range of wireless sensor network hardware at a small scale down to a handful of cubic millimeters. Each wireless sensor node, or “mote”, contains one or more sensors, hardware for computation and communication, and a power supply. Motes are typically autonomous, programmable, and able to participate in multihop mesh communication.
Smart Dust can be used in various applications including, for example, defense applications such as the deployment of defense networks rapidly by unmanned aerial vehicles or artillery. Due to the above, there is an ongoing demand for improvements in Smart Dust technology.